


Epilogue

by batyatoon, dotfic



Series: A Thin Chain of Next Moments [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-26
Updated: 2008-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/pseuds/batyatoon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time's run out for Dean, but Sam and John aren't ready to give up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: You do have to read [A Thin Chain of Next Moments](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/tag/a+thin+chain+of+next+moments), an AU breaking off with canon after "Crossroad Blues," in which Dean made a ten-year deal to save John, to read this. If you have already read it, thank you. We made you a present. (Also, we wrote the beginning of this before the season 3 finale aired. Standard disclaimers about having been jossed/kripked apply.) Big thank yous to [](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/profile)[**iamstealthyone**](http://iamstealthyone.livejournal.com/) for the thoughtful beta, and again to [](http://destina.livejournal.com/profile)[**destina**](http://destina.livejournal.com/) for her support of this AU.

They haven't even started on him yet, and already there's pain. It's like the air itself wants to hurt him, stinging his eyes and his lungs, prickling like needles just touching his bare skin -- not piercing yet, just touching. The rock wall behind him is unpleasantly, feverishly warm and stinks of sulfur, and each knob and spur digs into his back like a dirty finger seeking out a nerve. The shackles on his wrists and ankles are cold, sucking the heat away until he can barely feel his hands.

Sweating and shivering, Dean struggles to force his eyes open. They're all around him, god, he can _feel_ how many of them there are, and every single one wants a piece of his ass. And they haven't even...

Wait.

Why _haven't_ they started on him yet?

The effort of opening his eyes against the burning forces a tiny grunt out of him, and the barbed air presses closer. An eager ripple of movement goes through the swarm of demons, like guard dogs straining against the leash. But for the moment they're all keeping a distance.

Because standing between the demons and him is Dad, feet braced wide in the stinking dirt and ash, Colt in one hand and silver knife in the other.

For a second Dean's sure he's hallucinating.

Then Dad glances over his shoulder at Dean, smiles grimly, face streaked with sweat and ash. Dean sees his grip on the knife fumble and adjust, as if his hand's shaking and he's trying not to let it shake. With a jolt of adrenaline that sears his chest, Dean realizes he's there, he's _real_.

"All right," says Dad calmly, turning back to the demons. "Who's first."

***

  
The Colt's grip is warm in his hand, pulsing his own heartbeat back at him like a living thing. John's a little bemused at how steady and slow that heartbeat is, even as he watches the air at the center of the crossroads ripple and twist like melting glass, even as he listens to Sam's voice rolling out the syllables of the Sanskrit.

Even with Dean's body lying nearby, too still. Far too still.

 _I went to Hell_ , John said once, _because I couldn't bear to watch you die._

The tortured air above the chalk diagram around them writhes, swells, and silently bursts. Edges curl back to frame the wound in the world, a gate just big enough for a man to step through.

Nineteen months since the crossroads demon laughed at his offer to take Dean’s place. Since she said the part he never told his boys. _Hell doesn't need to give away anything to get your soul, John_ , she told him, gently chiding, smiling. _Your poor, battered, bartered soul. All we have to do is wait._

Demons lie, he knows that; he's always known that. But it was no surprise, really, to learn that Hell would get his soul when he dies. Somehow it's like he's always known that, too.

John draws the knife from his belt, and looks up to meet Sam's eyes. They're enormous in his pale face, and for a fleeting moment he looks about nine years old again, fighting his terror and grimly determined to do his part and trusting his Dad to get them all out of this.

"Pace yourself," John tells him quietly. "You got the hard part."

The moment’s gone when Sam pauses to give him a quick smile, crooked and ironic and adult, between the words of the ritual. Then his eyes widen and he jerks his head sharply toward the gate.

An eddy of black not-quite-smoke has drifted out of the gate in those few seconds of distraction, pouring itself through the air. When it hits the barrier of the Devil's Trap they’ve laid down around the gate diagram, the demon coils back on itself, casts from side to side in a blind seeking movement, and then turns and launches itself at Sam.

Before Sam can get his own knife out, John's makes a silver arc in the air. Bolts of non-light stitch through the demon like lightning through clouds, and it dissipates like the smoke it resembles.

"They don't get any one of us," John half-whispers, and he can feel the tight dangerous smile coming back to his face, a smile he hasn't worn in years but somehow it still fits perfectly. "Not today."

 _You should've taken my offer, you bitch._

He looks at Sam again. His youngest child has a comforting voice. This is something he's known ever since Sam's voice started to deepen in his teen years (and in those days, it seemed like Sam directed it at him more often in anger than reassurance) but it's never jumped out at him sharply until now.

"You hold this door, Sam. I don’t know how long this’ll take but you _hold this door_."

Sam nods, his lips pressed tight for a moment before he has to go on with the recitation.

One nod in return, and John turns and steps through the gate.

***

  
The portal ripples around his father, consumes him with a shimmer, more viscous than water. Sam doesn't blink until Dad’s fully inside, until the last glimpse of his coat vanishes.

There was no time to practice the Sanskrit. His pronunciation's probably crap but the incantation's working so far; the portal stays open. It will stay open so long as he keeps speaking the rhythmic syllables. Sam rolls his shoulders, knife gripped in his hand. Can't pause longer than a breath.

Can't turn to look at the body lying on the ground a few yards beyond the edge of the Devil's Trap.

Two more demons curl out through the portal, black streams of smoke sinuously twining, snapping back as they strike the invisible barrier. Still chanting, Sam rakes the air with the knife. Dark light cuts through the smoke streams and they split and disperse.

He steps back, careful not to cross the outer edge of the diagram, lowering the knife. Keeps chanting, hears his voice start to grow rougher, slows to pace himself. Time is nothing, he can do this forever if he has to. A wind ruffles the trees overhead.

It's like he's the only human left in the world, in the night, consonants rolling from his tongue. _Hold this door._ This is all that has ever been, the sound of his own voice, the shimmer in the air. The Devil's Trap chalked in the dirt, fifteen feet in diameter around the portal, defining the edges of the playing field.

Can't think about how Dean just dropped, slumped bonelessly to the ground.

Can't think about the body lying a few yards away.

He does let himself glance at the luminous face of his watch.

Sam shifts his weight from one foot to the other, takes a tighter grip on the sheet of paper in his left hand, the knife in his right. Keeps reciting.

***

  
The acid air of this place made John choke at first, remembered pain lancing down his back and arms, through his gut: _it burns, oh god, please, it burns_. He made it this far gritting his teeth, pushing the memories to the back of his mind, but he doesn’t need to do that now. As soon as he saw Dean shackled to the rock wall, head bowed, his skin pale against the char-colored stone, his own pain faded like it was never there.

No deals. No bargains. Nothing offered. John Winchester has returned to Hell for one thing, and he's taking it and going home.

He's already killed two demons getting to Dean, and now that he’s reached him, the rest are holding their distance, gathered, poised and ready to lunge. The demons don't have the protection of human bodies here. Dean doesn't either, and his form is -- not ghostly, nothing so obvious -- but _tenuous_. As though he's not entirely real. Or as though John isn't.

"Hold still, son," he murmurs, keeping his eyes and his aim on the surrounding demons as he slips the knife back into his belt and reaches into one pocket. "We're getting out of here."

His hand comes out of his pocket holding a one-inch glass vial of clear liquid. He keeps the Colt aimed at the demons, thumbs the cap of the vial off and carefully, carefully pours two drops onto the iron cuff on Dean's wrist. Acrid smoke billows up from the point of contact, along with a stink of scorched metal and a shrieking hiss. The massed demons echo and redouble the hiss, virulent with loathing, and for the first time they all press backward, away from them.

He has to concentrate to make his hand solid enough to pull Dean's wrist free of the twisted, melted iron, and then he's bending to get the one at his ankle. He's hurrying, and it makes him careless; on the third shackle a droplet of the liquid spatters onto Dean's skin, and the smell is suddenly one of burning meat, and the strangled cry of pain in his son's voice hits him like a blow.

"Sorry, Dean, I'm sorry --" There's no time for anything more than that, barely time to reach out and wipe away the sizzling drops with the edge of his hand. A tremor goes through the ground underfoot, and another, and the air in the distance is starting to warp and darken.

"It's coming." Dean's voice is a whisper, hoarse with dread. "Something's coming…Dad, get out of here, run --"

"I see it," he says, prying apart the last scrap of iron. "When I say go, you run with me. Make for the blue light fifty yards to your right. That's where Sam's holding the door." Dean opens his mouth and John adds, quickly, "…from the other side." John holds Dean's eyes with his. "For both of us, you understand?"

The tremor is closer now, louder, and the burning prickle in the air is sharper. A rustle of vicious anticipation goes through the demons around them, countless little whispers of pleased malice: _He's coming._ John doesn't glance at them, not until he sees the paralyzing fear fade out of his son's face, replaced by a tense, wary hope.

"Got it," Dean breathes.

John's hand dives back into his pocket and comes out with a handful of the same clear vials, and in the same movement he turns and dashes them to the ground between the two of them and the demons. Shattered glass sprays upward, and on contact with the tainted earth of this place, the holy water explodes into flame like gasoline on a bed of coals.

"GO!"

***

Sam pivots, slashes with the knife, turns and slashes again. The demons are coming through thick and fast now, one on top of the other, giving him no time between attacks. His breath is rasping in his throat, but he’s still chanting, can’t stop. Can’t step back out of the Devil’s Trap either; it would give him a moment to breathe because the demons couldn’t follow him, but he’d lose his hold on the gate. It could close, trapping his brother and father in hell – or blow wide open, too wide to ever seal.

Even if this works, it's creating a weak spot on the world, what they're doing, even once the portal closes again. Dean’s going to be furious.

It’s been half an hour. (Half an hour here, at least. He has no idea how long it’s been on the other side of the gate.) His need to gasp for breath is becoming harder to ignore, each demon getting harder to repel, throwing themselves at him without any sense of self-preservation in their urgency to escape Hell.

A demon launches itself at his head, and for a heart-stopping moment he loses track of the next word. It’s there in the next second, and the knife takes care of the demon, but that’s when the truth first stares him in the face with a death’s-head grin.

They’re not going to get out of this.

 _Ava – Mary, Jimmy – I’m sorry._

There's a step behind him, boots against gritty dirt, but he can’t turn to look. He keeps reciting, fends off the next demon, risks a glance over his shoulder, and almost freezes when he sees it's Bobby, cap shadowing his face. Sam shoots him a look, scrunching his face around the unending words, the best he can do to communicate his confusion.

In answer, Bobby just nods once, a terse jerk of his head. He steps deliberately two paces over the edge of the Devil’s Trap, plants his feet in the dirt like he's grown there, pulls out his own knife, and says “Get behind me,” in a tone that brooks no argument.

Bobby's not supposed to be there. He's supposed to be waiting at home and in forty-eight hours' time, if he doesn't hear from them, he's supposed to come and seal the portal, lay down wards around the Devil's Trap.

That last night, Sam and Dad worked it out in whispers across the kitchen table, after Dad returned to the house, while Dean slept. It was a final and desperate fit of inspiration, when they looked yet again at scraps of information gathered over years and the dangerous answer jumped out at them. There was a frantic call to Bobby to cross-check something, the drowsy grumpiness in Bobby's voice snapping away in an instant as soon as Sam told him what they figured out.

The next demon that rushes at Sam splits itself on the sweep of Bobby’s knife. Sam almost glances at the body, but instead steps behind Bobby and keeps on chanting.

***

Dean stumbles, and John doesn’t think, doesn’t have to concentrate to make his hands solid enough to grab Dean’s shoulders, then push him along ahead of him.

He’s down to his last half-dozen vials of holy water, the last few bullets in the Colt; but as claws swipe out, John fires. There’s a shriek and the demons pursue a little slower. They’ve seen what the Colt does, and fear it, but it hasn’t made them stop following yet.

And behind them, there’s a darkness in the sky, if the sky of Hell could get any darker than it already is, deep burning black-red, smudged thick with smoke and dark scraps that could be wings. The sense of that presence getting closer, while the demons yammer and whoop, eyes and teeth flashing.

The ground trembles.

***

Sam's voice is scratching sandpaper rough, and his jaw hurts. The demons keep coming and Bobby keeps slashing with the knife, the sparks creating an after-image against Sam's eyelids. He closes his eyes a moment, breathes between phrases, thinks only of the feel of his tongue against his teeth, his mouth forming the words.

Sam's voice is about gone, rasping in his ears.

Then another voice joins his own. Bobby starts speaking the incantation with him. He can't take over-- once the opening spell begins, the speaker must continue. But Bobby's voice echoes his own, and then he grips Sam's shoulder, squeezes once, lets go, and it's enough. It has to be enough, Bobby’s voice echoing Sam’s words loud and certain into the night.

The portal's surface ripples, and something comes through. Not a demon.

Dean.

He flickers, looking as if there's a light shining through him. Stumbles into the Devil's Trap, stops short against the barrier. His eyes meet Sam's, confusion and hope and fear mingled.

Sam’s next breath catches in his throat.

It happens fast. Dad backs out of the portal right on Dean's heels, fires the Colt twice more, yells "Close it now," and Sam stops chanting.

There's a deep howl from inside the portal right before it vanishes, leaving only the air, the view of the road running off towards a starlit field, shadowed woods on either side. And that pale version of Dean, who looks down at the chalk lines at his feet in bewilderment.

Dad scuffs through the edge of the Devil's Trap, gestures for Dean to step out. He does, and Bobby redraws the missing section. Dad’s eyes skip over Bobby, return to him, narrow just slightly, and move on.

Then Dean sees the body lying on the dirt, and his eyes widen.

Sam's voice is completely hoarse, a rasp of a whisper. He can hardly bear the aching swell of hope in his chest as he switches to ancient Greek, starting a new ritual.

***

  
Between one heartbeat and the next, Dean is looking down at his own body as it stares sightlessly up at the sky, and then he's lying on the ground, staring up at the stars.

He sucks in a breath, the air searing his lungs. He's forgotten how to breathe, how his arms feel, becomes aware in a dizzying rush of blood pumping through his body, the beat of his heart, the feel of stones digging into his back, the tickle of his own hair on his head.

Somewhere nearby someone lets out a curse, a few curses, in an awed tone. Someone else is sobbing, ragged and hoarse.

It's not Dad; Dad's on his knees next to him, a hand on Dean's chest, pressing against his heartbeat. Dean can't ever remember him looking like this, not even when they put his first grandchild in his arms.

Then Sam's hands grab him, roughly and desperately, and Dad takes his shoulders, and they're pulling him to his feet whether his legs will hold him up or not.

Dean blinks. "What the fuck."

Sam lets out a shaky breath that sounds like it could be a laugh, face damp, while Bobby -- and what is Bobby doing there? -- tugs off his cap and swipes his knuckles across his eyes.

Dean inhales again, feels the burn of it in his lungs, coughs. He curls his shaking hands into fists, doesn't quite get it. He was in Hell but then, but then Dad was there and yelling at him to run --

Ten years, gone in a blink.

He'll figure out what happened, eventually maybe understand it, whatever it is Sam and Dad did.

Now...

Now his life stretches ahead of him without a known and abrupt end point.

Dean looks at Sam, watches his brother’s face break into a grin wide and bright as open sky. Looks at Dad, who’s staring at him with what looks like wonder, as if he can’t believe Dean’s real. At Bobby, who’s shaking his head like he thinks they’re all insane and enjoys every moment of it.

He feels time slowing.

Now…now he's going to have to figure out how to live.

  
~end  



End file.
